Beedster

Sounds like a fretless classical guitar to me

Love it

Thanks Stew, think it's unlikely to be honest, too much going on at present, but will let you know. C

Ah, gotcha! Thanks mate. C

Not getting that HKH?

Canterbury Kent. Will be in touch if things transpire that way. C

And with impeccable timing, UPS have just trashed my incoming amp. Same driver/depot as last time. Packaging badly damaged plus covered in an oily smelly liquid which they appear to have covered with tape to cover the fact. Guess what? Broken tubes and lose transformer. At least they're consistent. Now don't have a big amp for the weekend because my SVT is being a little bit naughty. I'd buy Stew's but it would need to be couriered. You can't make this stuff up can you

Hope? Hope is wasted on couriers. I'm currently waiting on the delivery of an amp that has been in transit for 8 days, the delivery of which has been rescheduled several times, which delays the seller has just informed me was the result of the item 'needing to be repackaged at the depot'. This is courier speak for 'we dropped it, it's bloody obvious that we dropped it, we know that you won't sign for it because it's that obvious, so we're going to wrap it in 5 rolls of duct tape and hope we get away with it'. The irony is that the same courier did the same thing to me two years ago with an almost identical amp, it cost me £200 to fix, and the courier got out of it by saying that the original packaging was insufficient (something I couldn't disprove because it was no longer even there and which the seller couldn't prove because he hadn't taken any photos). The point is that with couriers, no amount of 'I did this when I sent my SVT and it was fine' or 'this should be OK' matters when things go wrong, and in my experience, the pressure that couriers are now under means that things go wrong far more frequently, as the result of which they have very well rehearsed processes and very fine small print to ensure they don't lose loads of money. And the customer loses out. This if OK if you can afford the loss, which many business can as they are either insured or build it into their risk, but when you're hard up for cash, and you're sending an expensive but heavy and easily dropped/damaged item that no courier is going to cover because it has glass components (and which even an expensive flight case will probably not protect against being dropped out of a lorry which was what had clearly happened to mine; flight cases, despite being designed to protect amps, were done so in the context that most people moving them had a vested interest in the amp getting to where it needed to go in one piece - cue numerous clumsy roadie stories), it's best to hold out for a local sale. When it goes wrong, someone somewhere within the courier company admin layers will be tasked with making sure that, in your case, they do not pay out. They spend their whole working day doing this, week in, week out. The stress and anger of dealing with this person, who will say "I'm sorry, despite the fact we dropped it/lost it/sent it to the wrong address, we do not owe you anything because we are covered by page 47 line 68 of our T&Cs" is not worth it, I've been there. Do I sound angry?

Good shout

Yep the rear PUP is a whole lot better than I expected

No winners here, just two strong competitors

Ha ha, thanks mate. I'd love to know where this has been in the interim, I'm pretty sure I sold it to Marcus, who else owned it since?

Yep, I had a Mesa BB750 delivered by UPS. They had clearly dropped it, and despite the fact it was in a head case and decent packaging, they managed to not only shatter all the tubes, but break the bolts holding the transformer and thereby cause a load of internal damage. Cost me £200 to put right. And that's a small cost to what it might cost with a heavy amp

Look for a local sale or a trade mate, two months ago I would have traded you a relatively lightweight Mesa Walkabout head for it. And trust me, if an international courier delivery goes bad, it tends to go really bad

Keep it Stew, it's one of the best bass amps on the planet. Find a bass to sell if you need the cash, as I'm starting to realise, real bass tone versatility comes not from the range of basses, but from the range of amps in your collection

I wouldn't ship an all-tube amp any more, and recently bought a £190 return ticket and spent 16 hours on trains to collect an SVT because of this. I've had too many dropped packages over the years. At the weight of an SVT, a drop is catastrophic, and as I found out, couriers will not cover damage to glass even if the damage is categorically their fault, and it's an expensive re-tube.

New year, new gig, and a fortuitous opportunity to buy back the bass I custom ordered from Modulus in 2007, at the time because it was the more cred (compared to the sparkly finishes) of Flea's basses to my eye. It's great to have it back, didn't realise how much I;d missed having a Modulus around the place Walshy, thanks so much mate The bass..... And why I love this bass (apart from the fact that it's bloody awesome to play)....

That was my emotional reaction when I first saw the bass

Quite a nice demo here

Very very nice, to the point that having payed conventional Precisions for a VERY long time, I have to question the sweet spot orthodoxy (although there's really no agreed sweet spot for the back PUP anyway)

Glorious, that is all, I've always felt that P/Js lack a little something, P/Ps are clearly where it's at. And wow, Fender Custom Shop build quality in every respect.